


stop (or, Pepper thinks about consent)

by asynchrony



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 14:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asynchrony/pseuds/asynchrony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper reflects on consent and coercion and codependency and the men in her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stop (or, Pepper thinks about consent)

She says stop, and he doesn’t, and that’s the basic dynamic of their relationship, isn’t it?

He pushes and takes what he can, and gives up where she holds firm, where the absolute boundaries lie, and pushes some more in a week, a day, an hour, and it’s this inevitable game of give and take where the only one taking is him and the only one giving, giving of herself and her body and all she is, is her.

That's how Tony is, really, and of all the secretary-CEO-girlfriends Tony could have ended up with, she supposes she’s one of the best equipped to deal with this ridiculous dance, used to her boundaries being abraded by insistent men (although Tony doesn’t do it in bed, not like some have, and she reminds herself of that whenever something he does threatens to set her off, and it helps but it doesn’t.)

She thinks she’ll never get away from him, actually. She says stop, and he doesn’t listen, but that doesn’t matter now that she’s the CEO and she calls the shots and is entitled to ignore Happy when he isn’t taking no for an answer and do exactly the same to Tony, and it’s power she’s never had and power she’s infinitely sad that she’s only found at the helm of Stark Industries but that’s the way it is, isn’t it?

And if Tony doesn’t listen at home, well- she can’t leave him, can she? She’s too tied up with him, her life almost defined by what he does to her, with her, despite her, and there’s always the chance that the last ‘stop’ he understands is ‘we need to stop seeing each other’, not the ‘stop drinking’ after that, ‘stop being so reckless’, ‘you need to stop trespassing in our airspace or we’ll shoot you down’, and she can’t- can’t have another man’s death on her hands, someone else who never listened to her but whose end is her fault nevertheless because she should have been better, accommodated his flaws and his insistence and his needs better, and she isn’t even sure who she’s talking about now.

She did ask Tony one day when she was unravelling particularly badly (after Killian and the way his eyes made it oh-so-clear that there was no point even asking him to stop, after the fire under her skin stronger and more invulnerable than the willpower the magazines laud her for that she wishes she actually had reinforcing her spine rather than as a shell, after that particular violation in her lifetime’s worth of violations) if he’d ever had to cut sex short before her, words cherry-picked the way she does in her own brain, the way that makes her so good with the press. He thought for a moment and noted that when he was drunk he tended to like to stick it out, however bad it was, but otherwise he’d certainly- he prided himself in being good to a girl, you know, he grinned, and he liked to work as hard as he could till everyone was happy. And if you couldn’t make them- happy? she asked, and he shrugged. Don’t remember that ever happening, he says, and she’s suddenly sick with the memory of countless faked orgasms, and never asks again. Tony doesn’t know what she means, what she’s wanting to hear, and if he fusses over her and gives her more expensive baubles for the next couple of days until the worry in his eyes dies down with a new obsession, that’s as close as she’ll get.

 

She doesn’t say stop, and he doesn’t stop giving her everything he thinks she wants and nothing she needs.


End file.
